Miss Hadleigh Claire

It's been a while since I have done my girlie updates. It seems like the first couple of years there are so many new things to document, and then after 2 it just slows down a bit, so I suppose now that I have two children over two years old (who the heck made that up?) I'll just let these updates be slower in coming.

In eight weeks, my little miss will turn four years old. Somehow four seems very old to me, like you are a real kid when you are four, dude you are almost ready to start kindergarten. Crap! I remember when HC was little it was so hard to figure out what she needed sometimes, was she tired, or hungry, or sick, or cutting a tooth? I thought it would be so nice to get to an age when I can actually know what is wrong and why.

Well, we should be at that age, but I am now convinced it just takes a LOT of work, time and effort to know your children. Last night, Dave and I spent all evening talking about Hadleigh, why do you think she does this, when she does that how should we handle it, how do we help her grow and develop, etc. The nice thing is that between the two of us we were able to answer a lot of questions, but it made me think how important it is for me to really know my girls and to treat them according to how I know them. Tiredness. So for better or worse, here are some things I know about my little girl.

She is really shy. Once she is comfortable in a situation, her shyness goes out the window, but it takes a while for her to feel comfortable. She never walks into a room and exclaims her presence. She doesn't walk up to kids on the playground and ask them to play with her. She will only timidly walk into her Sunday school class, though she loves it. But if one of big friends or little friends comes over to play, give her 2 minutes and she will be telling them all about something important, or will be showing off her ballet move. So, while she is shy, she is very extroverted in nature.

She has a hard time ordering things. I am wondering if part of this is just developmental, but I also think part of it is her personality. For example, if this afternoon I asked her what we did this morning, she would not be able to tell you. After some prompting she could would come up with the answer, but on her own forget it. After lunch I have been reading LIttle House on the Praire to her, and she LOVES it. She always says, "we have to read Laura and Mary and baby Carrie, what's going to happen?" After I read the chapter I will ask her about what we just read, and she will not be able to tell me what happened in the chapter. Yesterday this was really frustrating me, and then I started thinking that her mind works randomly, like her mind makes random associations and those are stored in her memory. The other day before we started reading she asked what was going to happen and then said, "maybe Santa Clause will come again" (which we had read about a few days prior) "or maybe there will be a scream in the night" (which had been the chapter before. So, she is obviously remembering what we have read in some way, but cannot seem to recall the information in the order that I want her to. I have noticed more and more how random she is, especially when I sit down and talk to her during potty time. The things she talks about are wild, jumping from one thing to another...oh the child is just like me. So it is nice to have a little bit of understanding about her brain when I get super frustrated about her not being able to recall something. I told Dave last night, the child can memorize whole passages of scripture in a couple of days, remember all the words to every song she has ever heard, but she cannot remember what she did this morning...how does this work? It's nice to have some thoughts about it now.

We talked about many more things about Hadleigh, and while at first it was tiring, it also became fun to think more about who she is as a person and how we can help her grow up and develop her loves, and talents. I love my sweet Hadleigh.